Days of Ignorance (3 page)

Al Hizam Street

Ayman didn’t tell him what they’d do with the animal once they’d hunted him down. He said to him, ‘First we get hold of him. Then we’ll see what we’re going to do.’

He couldn’t tell him everything. He told him the animal was a relative of one of the girls at the care home where his sister worked, and that he’d harassed her on the job. That was all he had needed to say to make Ayman’s blood boil.

‘Don’t worry,’ Ayman said. ‘We’ll teach him a lesson.’

Ayman volunteered to make enquiries about the animal so that they could find out the details of his daily life. Once Hashem had shown him where he lived, it wasn’t difficult to ask about him and keep an eye on him. There was nothing exciting about his daily routine – no late nights out, and no friends to speak of apart from two or three who came to see him from time to time.

And she was like him. The details of her life were few. Sometimes he wondered what she liked besides books. Was reading the only thing she enjoyed? She hardly took any interest in making herself up, so how could she possibly lure a man? What had attracted him to her? And what would they talk about – she and the animal – if all she did was read? He compared her often to the women he’d known, and wondered if there was any man who would pay any attention to her. Based on what he knew about women and the women he’d known, she wasn’t a woman. His sister wasn’t like a single one of them. She’d tried to get closer to him, but her attempts had failed, perhaps because he and she were like parallel lines that can never meet. He couldn’t understand how she looked at life. He found no enjoyment in the books she would hand him with a smile, saying, ‘Try to read one of them, at least. I picked out one I thought you’d like.’

But nothing she chose ever pleased him. He’d read a few lines out of two or three of them, then set them aside. He had no time or patience for cold, lifeless words. His time belonged to him, not to books. His time belonged to the things he liked to do, not to pages filled with words whose authors would die before anybody had taken any notice of them. And she would die, too – not now, but later.

She’ll die a slow death. Heh, heh, heh. Sweet idea: a slow death. Sweet and bitter. The remnants of schoolwork.

Y-e-a-h.

How many years had it been since he’d stopped going to school? Three years. God! Three years had passed since he’d graduated by sheer luck, but he hadn’t found a college that would admit him. It had seemed bad at first, but it didn’t seem that way anymore. He’d gotten used to it. Everything’s livable once you get used to it. Besides, what would he have done with a degree? Put it in a plastic cover and stick it in a drawer in his room like thousands of others who’d graduated years ago and who were still unemployed?

When Hashem had been unemployed for nearly two years, his mother had pressed his father to find him a job – any job – to occupy his time until something came along for him. So his father rented one of the numerous little kiosks located along the northern wall of Al Baqi’ Cemetery and filled it with souvenirs, prayer beads and prayer rugs. When his father told him about the kiosk, he was gripped with melancholy. He felt as though he’d been buried under a mountain of ice. He couldn’t say no. At the same time, he went on thinking all night about what he would do in a kiosk selling souvenirs to pilgrims along a cemetery wall. By the end of the week the depression had made him ill. One night he came home late and headed to where his mother sat waiting for him. He buried his face in her lap and said, ‘I’m not going back to the kiosk. I’m going to die.’

The next day his father stood at the door to his room. Without a trace of reproach in his voice, he said, ‘Regret doesn’t do any good, son. Your mother didn’t do you a favor by being so solicitous toward you. And I didn’t do you a favor by letting her raise you however she pleased. But I want to give you another chance so that I won’t feel I’ve wronged you.’

He didn’t specify what kind of chance it was he wanted to give him. But two weeks later he found out. One evening his father took him to a large store that sold perfumes and women’s accessories in one of Medina’s markets. After explaining to him that he’d be working as a salesman, he left him there. It wasn’t bad at all. By the time the first half hour had passed, he knew he wouldn’t be bored. How could he be bored in a place that was full of women? In the kiosk also he would have been encountering women of all sorts. Once, when he’d complained to a friend of how miserable he was in the kiosk, the friend had told him, ‘Listen, boy. To get a peek at all those women is the chance of a lifetime. And you’re telling me you’re depressed?! God had you in a little paradise! You should have waited till the pilgrimage season. That’s when things really get good. You would have been making your living off all sorts of women: Algerians, Moroccans, Syrians . . .’

But he hadn’t been able to bear it. He and death didn’t get along. How could he stand to have death right on the other side of the wall? How could he stand to see funeral processions coming from the Jibril Gate toward Al Baqi’, or to hear people praying over the dead two or three times a day? In the accessory shop, by contrast, death never passed by. Eyes passed by. Lips passed by. Hands passed by. Bodies passed by. But death didn’t pass by.

What had brought death along? Let it stay away. That’s right. Let death go on lurking on one of Medina’s back streets waiting for the animal. But did he want the animal to die? Did he really want him to die? He didn’t know. When he thought about it, something burned inside him, and he was sure that the minute he saw him, he would murder him. That’s right. Death was the gentlest of all the ideas that came to his mind. He thought of digging his teeth into his flesh, scratching up his face, dragging him through the streets. He’d ruminated on it for nights on end. And every time he thought about it, the scene in his mind got more brutal, but his rage didn’t subside. He didn’t want to hurt him just once, but over and over. He wished he could have a chance to torture him at length. That’s right. He wanted to torture him for as long as he’d been consumed by this thing that blazed deep inside him but that he couldn’t name. If he had a chance, he’d cauterize him with a hot branding iron. He’d pour boiling water on him. He’d kick him between the thighs. That’s right. He’d kick him over and over again till the animal knew where his limits were. He heaved a slow sigh. At least he knew he’d kick what was between his thighs. He had a chance to do it, and nobody was going to stop him. Who would stop him? Lots of people would think the same way if they knew what he knew. If they knew about it, all his friends would support him. They’d pounce with him on the animal and beat him to death.

Quba’ al-Nazil Street

He noticed that silence had been dogging him ever since he’d turned off the radio so that the attendant at the gas station on Airport Road could fill his tank. Silence dogged him as he left the station. It dogged him as he drove down the city streets: King Faysal Street, Airport Road, Hizam Street, King Abdulaziz Street. And now he was heading down Quba’ al-Nazil Street in silence, which was one of many things he didn’t like in this life. He didn’t like silence. He didn’t like silence to be alone with him, just as he’d never liked death to be nearby, and never would. When he went to sleep he didn’t turn off the TV in his room. Instead he would turn it down, leaving it on just high enough to make him feel that somebody else was around and that the universe wasn’t yet empty. Then he’d go to sleep. In the beginning his mother had come into his room late at night to turn the TV off so that it wouldn’t bother him. However, she stopped when she saw his reaction, which indicated that he actually wanted it on. She realized that this was another of her son’s peculiar habits, and that she would have to reconcile herself to it the way she’d reconciled herself to his other habits – like eating rice with bread, only taking a bath in the morning, not wanting anyone to talk to him after he woke up until all his senses were functioning one hundred percent, and not wanting to be touched by anybody he didn’t know. She’d been worn out by this last idiosyncrasy of his when he was a little boy, and he had embarrassed her on many an occasion when other people were around. If anybody kissed him, he would grab his clothes, or his mother’s clothes, and irritably wipe off the place where the kiss had been planted
.

It might have felt strange to be surrounded so entirely by silence, but the loudness of the thoughts that filled his head had kept him from noticing it. Now, though, he did notice it. He noticed a silence that was interrupted by nothing but the roar of his car engine and the other cars passing by. He extended his index finger and turned on the radio, and the car was filled with the upbeat music that always came on before the MBC FM news broadcast. News?!

What was on the news other than slaughter and portents of war? For the first time he noticed that he was tense, and that what felt like a heavy stone lay on his chest. He wished everything could be over quickly. But the things a person doesn’t like are never over quickly. If he’d been spending this time with one of his lady friends, it would have passed like a dream. But he wasn’t dreaming. He was awake, furious, and silent, listening to the news:

. . . According to interested parties, the Iraqi opposition conference being held in London for the past two days, which has thus far been unable to overcome differences between the various factions, has decided to extend its meetings today specifically in order to discuss the formation of committees that will be assigned the task of managing the country after the potential fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has stated that UN experts are making progress in Iraq, and has called on Baghdad to continue cooperating in order to avoid the outbreak of war.

A Japanese warship fitted out with an advanced Aegis missile-detection system is headed for the Indian Ocean today in a controversial move which, according to some analysts, points to support for any potential US-led attack on Iraq.

He thought of turning the radio off, but then thought better of it. Before long the news broadcast would be over and songs would come on. He wanted to hear some singing so that he could calm down, if even just a little, before finishing the job, then go home. If he had to wait, he would wait. However, he knew that once it was done, he would go home. He wasn’t going to spend the night out. No. He wasn’t going to wash his hands anywhere but in his own house. He was going to act according to the dictates of the situation. Then he would think about what he was going to do with
her
. After all, she was his sister, and he wasn’t going to beat her. Even if he thought of doing that, his father wouldn’t allow it, and he might beat him in punishment for it. He wouldn’t beat her. But he knew how to give her a taste of something more painful than a beating. First he had to finish
him
off, and then he would have time to deal with her.

God damn her! Wasn’t she bothered by his smell? Everybody of his race gave off a pungent, obnoxious odor. Hadn’t she noticed it? You could smell one of them a mile away. How could she not have noticed?

He remembered a boy named Musa who’d been his classmate in eighth grade. He remembered how he’d avoided him the entire school year. He’d avoided all contact with him, even looking him in the eye. Musa’s eyes were always red, and that was what had frightened him. Fags’ eyes are red. For a long time he’d seen Musa hovering around certain boys, and it terrified him, since he himself was no fag.

Besides, he had that pungent, obnoxious smell like everybody else of his race. It was most noticeable when he sweated, as though his body gave it off especially at those times. But Musa had gone away, and after that school year he’d never seen him again. Two years later he’d heard that he was in prison. He hadn’t been surprised. A lot of them seemed to end up there. The ones that weren’t good at playing ball or singing were good at committing crimes.

Maybe the animal had escaped playing ball, singing and living a life of crime and was good at something else. But that didn’t make him any different from the rest of them. And it would never mean that he had the right to breach his limits and aspire to things he wasn’t entitled to. Wasn’t he satisfied with what he’d achieved so far?

God damn him, and God damn her! After all, she was the one who’d started the whole thing. But everything would go back to normal. Everything. At least that was what he could think about now. How? He didn’t know. However, he’d be sure to make things go back to the way they had been in the beginning, and to do what he hadn’t had a chance to do before. If he couldn’t, he’d invent a new beginning to his relationship with his sister. This way, things wouldn’t get out of his control, and he wouldn’t find himself in another mess he didn’t know how to get out of.

Quba’ al-Tali’ Street

Would it be possible for me to make a new start?

The question shot through his mind like a bullet. He breathed deeply, and his nostrils were filled with a mysterious fragrance. He’d often wondered, almost hopelessly, whether he had anything to look forward to. He wasn’t bitter about his life. In the end, though, it wasn’t a life he could depend on: without a degree, without a job. He often claimed it didn’t matter to him. But deep down, it did matter to him. When he compared his life to his sister’s, he felt himself being stabbed by something small and hot. Her life was certainly not to his liking. But it had meaning – or so it seemed to him – since she had something to do, something to look forward to, something to dream of. It didn’t seem to him that she enjoyed her life away from her books and her work. However, she didn’t seem dissatisfied. Sometimes he suspected that she was never bored. When he saw her engrossed in her papers or books, writing or reading, or sitting at her computer screen reviewing something she’d written, he envied her, since he realized that she did what she did out of pure enjoyment. There was nothing in his life that he enjoyed that much. He didn’t even enjoy girls that much. Once he’d emptied his semen into one of them, he would withdraw without even a thought of coming back to her again. It was like a burden he was happy to be rid of, and beyond that, nothing mattered to him anymore. For a long time he’d thought he must be abnormal to feel this way – not to enjoy what he went running after with such gusto. But when he asked some of his friends about it, he discovered that they were just like him. Unlike him, however, they weren’t worrying about it. ‘You get the hots for her, you try her out, and that’s that!’ That’s what they told him. And that’s what he kept trying to convince himself of. But deep down, he knew it wasn’t really that way, and that it shouldn’t be that way. He knew that if there was something wrong, the fault lay not in things, but in the way he did things.